


all the things that you stood by before

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Series: o blessed gabriel, intercede for us [5]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, F/M, Loyalty, Mass Effect 3, Threats of Violence, give me this my classical education gets so little use, let me talk about loyalty in heavily group-oriented militarized cultures, listen turians are based on ancient rome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 01:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17694611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: See, the difference here is that Alenko is having to come up with his position on the spot, without really understanding what he’s done wrong.  Garrus has been putting the finishing touches on this resentment for a galactic standard year.Garrus has a specific set of concerns, with Kaidan Alenko on board the Normandy again.  They're not what most of the crew predicted.





	all the things that you stood by before

**Author's Note:**

> Am I spite-posting fic because someone picked a fight in the comments of the last one? Yes. Yes I am. The cure for self-esteem issues is sheer raw spite and anyone telling you otherwise is probably afraid of your power.
> 
> Now, for the record, I can kind of get how Kaidan got to his stance on the situation. Sure, the whole "raised from the dead" thing was probably worst for Shepard, but it clearly wasn't a great time for anyone else either, and he lashed out. I get it. It happens. However, I _do_ think that, first of all, it's incredibly disingenuous of him to claim his response on Horizon was entirely motivated by the purest concern about Cerberus when it was clearly an emotional outburst more than anything else, and, second of all, sooner or later he has to suck it the fuck up and admit that he was wrong and I'm _deeply_ aggrieved that the game never gives me a chance to tell him exactly that. Especially since he pointed a damn gun at me. You better _believe_ I'd have shot your ass, Alenko, I'm trying to save the galaxy here. 
> 
> And, finally, I've read several fics about some variant of this conversation, but they mostly fall into either "a lot of jealous posturing" or "everything is totally fine because We Are Adults" and...hey, listen. When Victus' son got half his squad killed, his soldiers were very seriously talking about court martial or even execution, and he had to literally _die_ to restore his honor in their eyes. Somehow I think a culture like that might have more complaints about "you pointed a gun at your commanding officer and repeatedly denounced her as a traitor despite having very little to support that" than anything else.

So…there’s a betting pool, is the thing.

The Normandy’s not that big a ship, there are plenty of bets on personal lives and battle outcomes and the big ship pool on whether or not they’re all going to die horribly fighting the Reapers.  Hell, even Garrus and Shepard have their ongoing kill count—she’s up two, mostly because he’s neither reckless nor stupid enough to bull rush a phalanx of Cerberus guardians just for a clear shot at their backs.

The point is that there’s a betting pool.

Technically, Garrus isn’t supposed to know about the bet, but it seems like EDI’s latest round of programming tweaks has married an interesting merciful bent to her gossip-mongering and she pointedly didn’t answer questions until he got there, last week.

It’s also possible EDI is remembering the cutthroat gambling that led to Tali walking away from the Omega-Four mission with a picture of Garrus pressing his browplates to Shepard’s forehead, after he yanked her into the shuttle, and a round hundred and fifty thousand credits.  Apparently she cleaned Donnelly out entirely, and took nearly half the ration funding to boot.   _That_ pool had been kept entirely under the radar, with the enabling of a newly unshackled AI, and Garrus suspects that EDI might feel guilty.

Regardless, now he knows, and that’s why he’s waiting in the mess hall halfway through the skeleton shift, when he _could_ be asleep.  Upstairs.  With Shepard, with _Gabriel,_ who offered to let him stay in the same offhand, roundabout way she’s been doing since she pulled him out off Menae and restored him to his place on her ship.

And that’s the _real_ crux of the matter.  This is the Normandy.  _Her_ ship. 

There’s no one Garrus would rather follow into the jaws of death than Gabriel Shepard.  No general or primarch or battlemaster or matriarch of any race or army comes close to the commander, and if they all live through this and she’s still willing, he very much intends to watch her back until the day he dies.  She has a good heart but still knows how to make the hard call and live with the consequences.  Cerberus might have put her body back together, but she’s just too damn stubborn to die, and she’s got the willpower to drag the entire galaxy right along with her.  And yet…

At the end of the day, humans are just too _nice_.

 “Uh—hey, Garrus,” Alenko says as he rounds a corner.  He comes to a slow halt when he sees Garrus leaning against the counter, hip braced on the chrome, arms crossed idly, and from the way his eyes widen and his back straightens a little, he’s alarmed.

Garrus can see why.  The mess is empty—it’s probably pushing three in the morning by now.  EDI has the ship, and only three organic crew are awake to keep an eye on things while she runs things.  The beauty of having an integrated AI.  None of those three crew are here, and Garrus is fairly sure that EDI will keep her mouth shut on his behalf, so he’s as close to real privacy as the Normandy provides, outside of Shepard’s quarters.  Garrus is wearing his armor—Alenko is wearing a white shirt and plain black pants with the Alliance crest on the hip.  It’s not hard to deduce that Alenko gets insomnia and headaches when he’s been using his biotics in a fight and comes out to make tea at odd hours of the night to manage them, and equally easy to gather that Garrus is here with the intent to catch Alenko alone.

An uncharitable person might think that Garrus had ill intent.

“Alenko,” Garrus says with a polite nod.  “We should talk.”

“Right,” Alenko says, still wary. 

“I figured you might like to do this without an audience,” Garrus continues.  He doesn’t move, doesn’t so much as fidget, doing his best to hold onto the cool, collected headspace of lining up his next shot from a good perch.  If it were Shepard he were trying to stare down like this, he wouldn’t have a prayer.  Alenko, on the other hand, is already off balance and starting to look uneasy. 

“What,” Alenko says, “you here to warn me off or something?”

“Or something,” Garrus says, neutral.  “Humans seem to have a serious misconception about turians and possessiveness.  Half the ship is waiting for me to throw you into a wall.  Or shoot you.”

“If you’re trying to convince me you’re _not_ looking to shoot me, you’re doing a pretty terrible job.”  Alenko is starting to rally, his shoulders going back and his chin coming up so that he can look Garrus in the eye, and idly, Garrus notices that he executes the movement just like Shepard does, the same way she lets it roll out from her spine like armor is unfolding under her skin before she takes on a verbal firefight.  If Garrus was anyone else, it might be impressive.  On the other hand, Garrus knows for absolute fact that most everyone on the SR-1 learned that move from Shepard, himself included, and anyone but her is a cheap knockoff of the original titanium spine.

“I’m not,” Garrus says, unfolding his arms and taking his weight off the counter.  Straightening up to his full height gives him a good foot on Alenko, and he sees Alenko’s gaze track tellingly over the right side of his face.  Getting the scars may have been unpleasant, but Garrus can’t fault their results when he’s looking to intimidate.  No wonder Gabriel was so annoyed about losing the scar through her eyebrow to Cerberus’ improvements.

“Not what?”

“Trying to convince you.  I’m just pretty sure we’re on seriously different pages about this conversation, and I feel like I should clear things up.”  Garrus takes a step forward and Alenko clenches his jaw and stands his ground.  “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me what we’re talking about, Alenko.”

“Shepard,” Alenko says through his teeth.  A faint blue static is starting to race over his skin, crackling down his throat and racing across the knuckles of a clenched fist.  Garrus watches and does some mental math.  He probably couldn’t get out of the way in time if Alenko decided to cut loose.  On the other hand, Alenko definitely couldn’t justify it later.  Garrus hasn’t laid a finger on him.

A little pain from a run-in with an angry biotic doesn’t seem like a sufficient deterrent right now.

“Correct,” Garrus says, drawing out the word into his best Palaven drawl and letting his subvocals drop a whole octave, into a territory that would be considered a direct challenge if Alenko could hear it.  “What else?”

“Let me guess,” Alenko snaps.  “Don’t try anything with Shepard.”

“Hmm,” Garrus rumbles, letting the false thoughtful tone fill his chest and shiver through his bones.  “That’s where I think you’ve gotten confused.”

Alenko’s scowling at him now, and Garrus is more gratified than he’s prepared to admit, by that development.

See, the difference here is that Alenko is having to come up with his position on the spot, without really understanding what he’s done wrong.  Garrus has been putting the finishing touches on this resentment for a galactic standard year.

“You’re sleeping with her, right?” Alenko demands, and he’s getting toward belligerent.  Garrus is comfortable with that turn of events, truth be told.  “So, what, you’re just here to rub it in that I screwed up?”

“Who Shepard sleeps with isn’t your business,” Garrus says, waving a hand dismissively.  “But not really my point here.  See, here’s the thing.”  Folding his hands behind him in a casual parade rest, Garrus paces across the corridor that leads to the battery.  “This is an Alliance ship—was even when it was actually a Cerberus ship, because it’s Shepard’s ship first.  That means she gets to run it how she wants.  And if how she wants is with you on it, I want to get some things straight.”

Garrus turns back to Alenko and narrows his eyes at him, feeling himself _bristle_.  His mandibles are flared, down and out—not the quick movement of a smile, but a threatening thing, meant to expose his teeth, sharp and reptilian and very much the image of a turian that’s probably been used to scare a hundred thousand human children in their beds. 

“The next time you point a gun at her, I _will_ shoot you,” Garrus says, leaning forward just enough to loom, his hands still clasped behind him.  “You might have the best reasons in the world.  But if you pull that again, you are going to meet my Widow in a very permanent fashion.”

He sees the words hit home like a brick to the jaw—hard, shocking, and brutally efficient.  Alenko is really off his stride now, and the image of a tough soldier flickers for a moment as his mouth parts in shock and he gives half a step of ground.  Garrus takes a moment to feel satisfaction roll through his chest as blue and thick as blood.

“If this was a turian ship,” he continues, letting his voice shift back to something idle, even friendly, “I’d have been within my rights to throw you in the brig for calling your CO a traitor without evidence, all the way back on Horizon.  Hell, on Mars, if I’d been there, I could have shot you outright for repeating the same claims after you’d been proven wrong.  Turians are like that, see.  Die for the cause and all that—and die for our commanders, too, usually a whole hell of a lot quicker.  Even the Alliance, during the Relay Three-One-Four Incident, admitted we were a loyal bunch.  There was an old joke about it and everything.  Goes like this.  What’s the fastest way to commit suicide in the galaxy?”

“Tell a turian his commander’s brother’s best friend’s lieutenant is a coward,” Alenko finishes for him.

“That’s the one.”  Garrus paces across the corridor, turns, paces back, stops in front of Alenko again.  “If a turian’s soldiers turn on them, you _know_ they’ve done something really terrible.  Treason.  A decision so bad it got a whole platoon killed.  That kind of thing.”

Garrus’ subvocals are getting harsh again, making his voice start flanging badly, the in-and-out distortion of real, visceral anger.  It’s—unfortunate, that anger is one of the few subvocal indicators within the range of normal human hearing, generally butting right up against the register where turians actually speak.  It was a warning system, once, to anything hungry or reckless enough to test its luck against a seven-foot armored creature with teeth and claws, an evolutionary alarm built right into their twinned vocal cords and tucked alongside their usual speaking pitch for easy access.

It’s evident that, for all his faults, Alenko remembers his training and knows this fact as well as Garrus does.  Garrus doesn’t even try to hide it, pushes his secondary vocal cords to make the growl louder.  He knows the Alliance has the sound of turian anger listed on some kind of grand spreadsheet about threat level, and he’s _glad_.

Normally Garrus would never dream of trying to enforce turian military structure over Shepard’s head.  Her sharp eye for alliances and ability to bite back a nasty comment for the sake of professionalism are the only things that are going to see them through this war, if anything can.  He admires that about her—her ability to wrestle whole governments into line when she has to, her ability to see the clearest straight-line path between problem and solution.  That includes the Alliance, and the second human Spectre.  It’s Shepard’s call.

On the other hand, Alenko pulled a gun on her not so long ago, and Garrus feels the need to lay out the clear, concise rules he’s decided to operate by.  It’s only fair. 

“Listen,” Alenko is saying, “I—I’m sorry for what happened on Horizon, but I stand by what I said.  Cerberus is—they’re evil.  They’re turning people into _things_.  Shepard made a deal with the devil--”

“To save your life,” Garrus interrupts sharply, “and the lives of literally tens of thousands of colonists.  Sometimes you work with people you’d rather not, in order to achieve a higher goal.  I know that humans love their individualist philosophies, but even you must have figured this out by now.”

“She betrayed the Alliance--”

“She didn’t betray anyone.  If you had let her explain, instead of calling her a traitor and running back to the Alliance, you would know that.  And _somehow_ ,” Garrus says, raising his voice when Alenko opens his mouth, clearly looking to interrupt, “despite the frankly disgraceful way the Alliance treated her, she still put on her dress blues and went quietly when they called for a court martial.  A turian commander would have been given a medal, for destroying the Alpha Relay, casualties of war notwithstanding, and your admirals locked her up.”

“That wasn’t my fault.”

Garrus cocks his head, a little gesture that he knows humans read as quizzical.  Turians read it as looking for the best way to rip out a throat.  Interspecies confusion has its advantages, sometimes—he sees Alenko relax a fraction before Garrus speaks again.

“No,” Garrus agrees.  “It wasn’t your fault.  It does beg the question, though, of why Vega tells me you went ahead and picked a fight with Shepard about Cerberus on Mars.  A matter of hours after Shepard was _comprehensively_ proven right about the Reapers, at which point you could forgive me for thinking that even the densest human could wrap his head around the idea that she was ready to sacrifice her morals to stop the Collectors.” 

“We were all under stress on Mars,” Alenko says stiffly.  It’s clear that Garrus has hit a nerve, and he very much intends to continue doing so.  “We both said some things we didn’t mean.”

“It’s strange,” Garrus says.  “In my experience, when Shepard is under stress, she’s more honest than ever.”

“We had just lost our _planet--_ ”

“It’s going around,” Garrus says unsympathetically.  “Somehow I’ve never accused an old friend of being a Cerberus drone, though.”

“They could have done _anything_ to her!” Alenko bursts out, sweeping an arm wide.  “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t trust her, but she disappeared for _two damn years--_ ”

“She _died!_ ”  It comes out as a shout, ragged and furious and laced with something dangerously like an anguished keen, and Garrus snaps his mouth shut, forcing himself to take a deep breath.  “She died,” he repeats more quietly.  “She died saving her crew, and Cerberus brought her back to fight for them without her permission, against her will.  And the only reason we’re not discussing your borderline _pathological_ desire to blame her for that is because Joker really, _really_ wants to be the one to have that talk with you.”

“Joker?” Alenko asks, apparently blindsided.  He hasn’t been back on the ship long—just long enough to get out to Gellix and rob Cerberus of some of their finest scientific minds.  Shepard even brought Alenko along on the away team, with a knife-point glint in her eye that said she was hoping to prove something to him.  So it’s understandable that Alenko hasn’t, perhaps, entirely grasped that his old friends might not all be friendly anymore.

“Joker,” Garrus confirms.  “You know.  The man Shepard died saving.  He’s taking it a little personally.  I’m not going to deny him the pleasure of having that conversation, though, so try to focus here, Alenko.  This is for your benefit.”

“You tell me, then,” Alenko says, and humans can’t bristle like turians do, but he seems to be having a try at it.  “How did _you_ know it was really her?  Did you just trust her, first glance?  Not worried that she might be a clone, or AI, or God knows what?”

“It seemed unlikely that a Cerberus-controlled version of her would run headfirst into three entire merc groups for a turian,” Garrus says dryly.  “And once I saw her decide to take out a gunship with an assault rifle, I was pretty convinced.  All evidence says AI has a better sense of self-preservation than that.  But honestly—if she was under Cerberus control, I think she’d have trusted Cerberus more.”

“She obviously trusted them enough.”

“Enough to take me and Tali on every possible away mission and spend half her time destroying listening devices in every corner on the ship and put her life on the line trying to sway her crew to her side.”  Garrus lets some of the anger seep back into his voice.  “She expected Cerberus to turn on her the second she became a loose end.  Which, again, you would know if you had given her the chance to explain herself instead of becoming the latest in a _series_ of Alliance and Council personnel to condemn her as a traitor and a lunatic.”

If anyone had given Shepard the chance to explain, if anyone had believed her, if anyone had _listened_ —would Earth and Palaven and untold dozens of other worlds be burning, now?  Would they have started work on the Crucible directly after the Alpha Relay?  If they had heeded Shepard’s warnings when Sovereign attacked, would they be _ready_ , now?  Would they have been the first cycle to stop the Reapers in their tracks, without a single world fallen?  How many lives were lost because one human commander wasn’t believed?

Questions like that keep Garrus up at night.  They give Shepard screaming nightmares. 

“You know,” Garrus says, distant, picturing a world where Shepard returned from Eden Prime and was _trusted_ , immediately and without question.  “Wrex said something, on Tuchanka.  He said that _Shepard_ would mean _hero_ , to every krogan born from now until the fall of their race.  That’s how she’ll be remembered, by the entire galaxy.  If we live through this, Shepard is going down in history as the biggest damn hero the stars have ever seen.  And a hundred years from now, five hundred, whatever—our grandchildren will look at the way her own people refused to believe her and wonder what we were thinking.”

“I believed her about the Reapers--”

“Then your reaction on Horizon was purely emotional.  Because your feelings were hurt.”  Garrus comes back to the present moment and clicks in his throat, a sound he mostly associates with his mother, disappointed in him for needling his little sister.  “Maybe that’s why Alliance ships have fraternization regs.  Turians don’t bother with them.”

“My relationship with Shepard had nothing to do with--”

“You can’t have it both ways.  Either you suspected Shepard because of Cerberus and didn’t believe the Reapers were a great enough threat to make a—what did you call it?  A deal with the devil,” Garrus says, shaping the unfamiliar phrase carefully.  Devils are such an archaic concept in turian spirituality as to be virtually unheard of.  “Or you _did_ believe her and you were too angry to listen.”  Garrus takes another deep breath—Alenko looks shaken, like maybe he hasn’t thought of it that way before.  Good.  Garrus leans back against the counter to deliver the death blow, arms folded loosely and ankles crossed, the image of casual attention.  “And I even understand.”

Whatever Alenko was expecting, it wasn’t that.  “What?”

“You felt abandoned.  You lashed out.  You were seriously out of line, but I understand how you got there.  Shepard was prepared to overlook that encounter.  She still is—you’re here, aren’t you?  She backed you as a Spectre, said all the right things about being friends again, and welcomed you back onto her ship when you asked.  Humans have big hearts.  Which is why _I’m_ here.”

Garrus blinks once, slowly, and watches Alenko go a little grey in the dim mess hall lights.

“This is a human ship.  But I’m telling you right now, Alenko, you’re under turian loyalty conditions.  You and I both know that, if it had come down to it on the Citadel, Shepard would have shot you to save the Council.  She might have regretted shooting a friend, later, but she would have taken the shot—and she’s a better shot than you.  Consider this a polite warning that I have a sniper rifle and I’m more than willing to make sure the commander never has to be the one pulling the trigger, if you turn on her again.”  Garrus straightens up and gives Alenko a civil nod as he starts to walk past, toward the elevator.

It’s Alenko’s voice that stops him, quiet and a little shellshocked and—sad, Garrus decides.  Garrus can live with that outcome.

“You really love her.”

“That’s not relevant to this conversation.  Shepard is my commander.   She’s brilliant, brave, devoted to the mission.  And she’s made it clear more than once that she’d die for anyone on this crew in a heartbeat.  Even did it, once.  Any turian would do anything for a leader like that.”  Garrus hesitates for a moment, and then he glances back at Alenko and says, “But.  For the record.  Yes, I do.  I have for a long time.”

Alenko’s mouth twists up.  “Archangel, right?”

“That was someone else’s idea.  But I won’t say it didn’t occur to me.”  It had been a nice thought, sometimes, when Garrus was alone on Omega, to imagine that Gabriel was there with him, that she really was some kind of spirit of battle and righteousness guiding his hands.  The name had just been a better way to remember.  _The Archangel Gabriel_.  “And you’re still in love with her,” Garrus notes, because they might as well get it all out in the open.

“I—yeah, who wouldn’t be?”  Alenko laughs a little, weakly.  “But, uh.  You’re right.  She’d have shot me without a second thought, if she had needed to.  Not to mention she closed me down pretty hard, in the hospital.  She—she loves you too.  A lot.  Mercilessly.  I don’t know if I could take someone loving me like that.”

“Then I think this worked out for the best,” Garrus says, flat, because—spirits, Shepard does _everything_ mercilessly.  Even showing mercy.  “Remember what I said, Kaidan.  Consider yourself on notice.”

“Yes, sir,” Alenko says, and Garrus would think he was making a joke, except for the pin-straight line of his spine and the slight twitch of his hand, like he’s repressing a salute.  Garrus nods, and the door to the elevator slides open just in time for him to reach it and walk inside.

“Thanks, EDI,” Garrus says after the door closes.  “The commander’s quarters, please.”

“Of course,” EDI says.  “I have studied turian military customs.  I have been considering using them to improve my loyalty subroutines.  It was a very informative conversation.”

“Maybe run it by Joker and Shepard before you include any loyalty subroutines that permit execution of organics,” Garrus says.  “Just in case you accidentally include something that makes your jokes about subjugating us lower life forms—uh—less humorous.”

“I discuss many of my subroutine alterations with Commander Shepard.”  The elevator comes to a halt, but the door doesn’t open.  EDI pauses, and it’s so quick that Garrus wouldn’t notice if he didn’t spend a _lot_ of time talking with her, trying to find a way to keep the Thanix from needing recalibrations every other day.  “I do not care for Major Alenko.  Past evidence suggests that he is not a good companion for Commander Shepard.  She requires someone more—flexible.”

Garrus clears his throat and says, “I don’t have to stand here and let a sentient spaceship insult my flirting, EDI.”

“The commander placed the footage of that conversation under a privacy lock and ordered me to do the same to all other such personal encounters,” EDI says, amused.  “But I am quite serious.  Major Alenko seems to lack a certain level of—faith.”

“Faith?  Is that—within your subroutines, having faith?”

“Faith,” she says.  “Complete trust or confidence in something.  I have faith in Commander Shepard.  So do you.  Enough faith that we trust her to make the decision with the most tolerable outcome, and the lowest ultimate amount of suffering, even if we are unsure of her methods at the time.  Major Alenko is inflexible in the way he views the world.  He does not have faith.”

“And therefore, you don’t like him.”

“That is correct.”  There’s another pause.  “He also lacks reach.”

“Open this damn door.”

“Would you like me to close the betting pool on the outcome of your interaction with Major Alenko?” EDI asks, innocent as a winter breeze as the elevator door opens.

“Yeah, that’d be great.  Did someone win?”

“I did.  No one else on this crew has researched turian customs.”

“That sounds right.  Good night, EDI.”

“Logging you out, Adviser Vakarian.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I'm convinced that EDI and Garrus are buddies but I spent literally twenty minutes agonizing over whether she would call him Garrus or Adviser Vakarian or Mister Vakarian (or even XO Vakarian! My dude is basically first officer of the Normandy in ME3! Too many choices!) and I'm still not sure I'm satisfied. I finally settled that she calls everyone but Joker by their titles, no matter how friendly they are, and that Adviser Vakarian is his highest title on account of how he had generals saluting him, but....
> 
> I dunno. Maybe he spends all his time in the battery trying to get her to call him by his first name and now she's just insisting on titles to be petty.
> 
> As ever, I am on Tumblr!


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